Cygwin x86 end-of-life

Cygwin x86 end-of-life

[Jon Turney]

As has previously been announced, Cygwin is dropping support for x86 
Windows. Cygwin 3.3.6 is the final version supporting x86 (32-bit) 
Windows, and the forthcoming Cygwin 3.4 will be released for x86_64 only.

Concurrent with that, updates to x86 packages will be stopped, and the 
Cygwin x86 package repository will be archived.

(Instructions on the special steps needed to install from that archive 
will be forthcoming, once we've worked out what they are.)

If you're using x86 Cygwin under WOW64 on a 64-bit Windows OS, please 
strongly consider moving to an x86_64 Cygwin installation.

(If you have ARM hardware, we believe that x86_64 Cygwin works correctly 
using the x86_64 emulation in Windows 11)

If you're one of the tiny percentage of Cygwin users using x86 Cygwin on 
a real x86 Windows OS, don't panic! The current installation will 
continue to run on your system. You just won't get any more updates.

Re: Cygwin x86 end-of-life

[Jon Turney]

On 11/11/2022 15:50, Jon Turney wrote:
> 
> As has previously been announced, Cygwin is dropping support for x86 
> Windows. Cygwin 3.3.6 is the final version supporting x86 (32-bit) 
> Windows, and the forthcoming Cygwin 3.4 will be released for x86_64 only.
> 
> Concurrent with that, updates to x86 packages will be stopped, and the 
> Cygwin x86 package repository will be archived.
> 
> (Instructions on the special steps needed to install from that archive 
> will be forthcoming, once we've worked out what they are.)

To install the last cygwin version for x86, run setup using the options 
'--allow-unsupported-windows option --site circa_URL', where circa_URL 
can be one of:

* The URL for any sourceware mirror[1], followed by cygwin-archive/20221123

* 
http://ctm.crouchingtigerhiddenfruitbat.org/pub/cygwin/circa/2022/11/23/063457

Thanks to the Cygwin Time Machine for providing this archive.

These instructions have also been added at [2]

[1] Note that not all cygwin mirrors [3] also carry a full mirror of 
sourceware (but the list at [4] is believed to be sadly incomplete)
[2] https://cygwin.com/install.html#unsupported
[3] https://cygwin.com/mirrors.html
[4] https://sourceware.org/mirrors.html

> If you're using x86 Cygwin under WOW64 on a 64-bit Windows OS, please 
> strongly consider moving to an x86_64 Cygwin installation.
> 
> (If you have ARM hardware, we believe that x86_64 Cygwin works correctly 
> using the x86_64 emulation in Windows 11)
> 
> If you're one of the tiny percentage of Cygwin users using x86 Cygwin on 
> a real x86 Windows OS, don't panic! The current installation will 
> continue to run on your system. You just won't get any more updates.